311. First Investment? Why You Should Buy a Self Storage Facility
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With so many investment options—single-family homes, duplexes, the stock market—it’s easy to overlook self storage. But the truth is that a self storage facility is one of the best first investments, and you’re about to find out why. Whether you’re just starting your investing journey or looking to diversify your portfolio, storage could be a supercharger for your wealth.
In this episode, AJ and Conner break down why you don’t need to “work your way up” to self storage investing. What if we told you that these facilities offer better cash flow, more tenant diversification, and even lower barriers to entry in many cases—all for the same cost as a regular rental property? Even better: tenants aren’t calling you about backed-up toilets in the middle of the night!
Self storage is one of the lowest-defaulting assets in the US, meaning it’s much more profitable and less risky than you probably think. We get into the advantages these facilities have over residential real estate, as well as how direct investments compare to public markets (like stocks). We’ll also discuss the massive value-add opportunities that institutional investors are leaving to you, the small investor!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- Why a self storage facility is one of the best first investments in 2025
- How to buy a self storage facility for even less money than a single-family home
- Why self storage gives you higher returns with less risk than many other investments
- The small, value-add facilities institutional investors overlook (and leave to you!)
- The most common fears and myths about self storage investing (debunked!)
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Register Now for SSI Live https://www.selfstorageincome.com/live-event
🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You have a duplex. One person moves out. You lost 50%. Now, you have a $800,000 storage facility, |
| 0:07.3 | and you could have 70 doors. So you can literally lose 10% of the occupancy, and you're still |
| 0:15.0 | cash flowing. These are metal boxes. These are garage doors. Like, people are paying down your debt |
| 0:20.7 | by putting stuff on a floor. |
| 0:22.5 | Every month, they pay you. |
| 0:24.2 | Every year they pay more. |
| 0:25.6 | And over the long run, you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars on that spread. |
| 0:30.7 | And so it's just boring. |
| 0:33.1 | And it just click, click, click, click, click works. |
| 0:37.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:44.5 | What's up, everybody? |
| 0:45.7 | Welcome to self-storage InGum. |
| 0:47.3 | And today we're talking about why self-storage. |
| 0:51.5 | There are a lot of different investment opportunities, especially right now. |
| 0:57.3 | And there's a few things like cash flow that are just a given when you're looking at an |
| 1:03.3 | investment like storage, but that's not all of it. So why storage? Why now? What are the benefits? |
| 1:10.4 | And what does that investment look like? |
| 1:12.8 | So if I invest in it, what are the pros and cons compared to other assets and the long-term benefits? |
| 1:20.5 | So it's not as simple as just cash flow. There's a lot of other things going on that are very, very large as far as an investment |
| 1:29.6 | goes to your overall returns wealth creation strategy, especially when we compare it to other |
| 1:36.0 | options right now that are also good options. It's just different. And a lot of times we don't |
| 1:43.1 | really notice what that is. But before we dive into that real quick, guys, we are events coming up. So make sure you're there. All things sell storage, self storage income, Bend, Oregon, well, outside of Bend. It's at a resort outside of Ben. The resort's amazing. If you guys, you guys have got to be there is the most premier event in self-storage. |
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